Page 3 of Auctioned to the Billionaire Surgeon

I was sitting in Salt, one of the Salazar twins’ trendy restaurants, waiting for my father. He was late, and I wanted to leave. Nobody left my father, though. Nobody. Least of all his oldest son. I rubbed my temples. It had been a long, hard day of surgery at work, and this was the last place I wanted to be.

“Why couldn’t I have been born second?” I muttered to myself. Then I think he would have just let me become a surgeon and left me pretty much alone.

“What’s that, sir? Are you ready to order or are you still waiting for your guest to arrive?”

I looked at the server. She was gorgeous. All the people working for the Salazars were, so that wasn’t a surprise. Still, she was extra beautiful, and I couldn’t help thinking it had been a while since I’d had sex. I tried not to stare at her body like some sort of perv. I needed to get to Cayenne tonight. It was the Salazar’s luxurious but scandalous members-only sex club. I was past due for a night of hot, no-strings sex.

I realized she was still waiting for an answer.“Sorry. Yes, I’m still waiting. Could you possibly bring me a glass of whiskey?”

She didn’t even bat an eyelash at the rather obvious way I’d been checking her out. She was probably used to it.“Certainly, sir. Would you also like an appetizer? Mr. Salazar saw you over here and comped your meal.”

I turned to see whether it was Leo or Joaquin. The twins were the restauranteurs of the Salazar family. I met Joaquin’seye and gave him a chin nod of appreciation. I was sure he knew my dad would be meeting me soon. That’s probably why he comped the meal. Leo almost always comped my meal, but it was rare for Joaquin to do the same.

I knew my father would like the calamari, so I put in an order for that.

My father, Dominico Lanetti, was the head of the Lanetti crime family in West Bay, Georgia. As far as crime families in South Georgia went, we were second only to the Salazars. Most crime families did not get along. That wasn’t the case with my family and the Salazars. First off, the Salazars didn’t want to be known as a ‘crime family’ per se. They preferred for the people of Georgia to think of them as legitimate businesspeople. My family took a page from their book and decided to try for the same.

The second thing that made their friendship palatable was that we each stayed in our lane. The Lanettis were in charge of imports and exports in the area and ruled the ports. The Salazars? They ruled everything else.

My parents, originally from Italy, had moved to West Bay after I’d become great friends with Nico Salazar in boarding school. The two families had met during a parent weekend, hit it off, and Carlos Salazar talked my dad into settling here.

I was lucky to have escaped the family business by being inept in a couple of areas where my brothers and I were expected to excel. Personal communication was one. I took things very literally, and the subtleties often associated with criminal business discussions went right over my head. And then there was the whole‘taking a life’ thing. I sucked at that. The only time my father had ordered me to kill someone had been a disaster.

I’d approached the person from behind, held the gun out, my hand shaking with nerves, and then I blacked out. That’s all I remembered. Later, I found out I’d had a panic attack, vomited all over the guy I was supposed to kill, and fainted. My brothers apparently kept the security tapes of the incident andstill played it when they needed a laugh.

After that, my father had been happy to release me to boarding school, where I’d made lots of friends, and I’d shot right to the top of my class. School was a breeze for me, and I eventually sailed through medical school, my surgical practicums, and everything else. Dad had even been proud of me, which was a miracle considering how things had gone down for me prior to becoming a practicing surgeon.

Boarding school had been great. I’d become fast friends with Nico, Byron, and Reynolds, who was West Bay’s mayor. We’d grown up together, figured out the opposite sex together, and made pacts to stay friends forever. Because of that I had decided to settle in West Bay as well.

It was a no-brainer. They’d needed qualified surgeons here, my friends were here, and my family had settled here. Still, it was rare that my father requested to speak with me one on one.

But he had today. I knew he’d stopped off to talk to Carlos and Enzo Salazar on the way here. I was aware they had business dealings together, but I chose to ignore it as best I could. I’d found that burying my head in the sand when it came to anything related to ‘the business’ was my best bet.

There was a commotion behind me, and I knew Dad had arrived. I stood and turned to face him, a sign of respect in my family. He was a large man. He wasn’t quite as tall as I was, but he weighed a good bit more. It used to be all muscle, but as he aged, it was slowly turning to fat. He was still a handsome man at this point, and I assumed the insanely hot woman on his arm was his latest mistress.

Mama turned a blind eye to his many assignations, and they managed to live mostly separate lives. Dad lived in the old money portion of West Bay in an antebellum mansion on a fifty-acre estate. Mama preferred their mansion in the new money Estates at South neighborhood which was just a few miles from downtown West Bay and only a couple of miles from West Bay University. They rarely, if ever, went home to the family villain Foggia.

“Dad,” I said in greeting as he grabbed my face and planted a kiss on each cheek.“Always good to see you,” I lied.

He cocked an eyebrow at me.“Don’t lie son. You don’t do it well.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“You remember Gia Santoro, don’t you son?”

My mouth opened but no sound came out. This exquisite creature in front of me couldnotbe Gia Santoro. She was tall and slender. Her silky designer dress showcased her large breasts, stellar ass, and small waist. Her blonde hair was long and shiny, and her big brown eyes were bright with intelligence. Her skin was smooth and golden, and her lips were a perfect Cupid’s bow. They were also bright red.

I tried not to, but I was struggling not to picture them wrapped around my cock.

“Of course. Hello, Gia. How are you?” It was the best sentence I could string together in the face of so much beauty. I was normally smooth with women, but she had taken me by surprise.

Dad and the woman both laughed. “No, son, this is not Gia Santoro. This is my… secretary, Valeria.

“Nice to meet you,” she said with a smile.

I cringed inside, regretting that I’d pictured her in sexual positions when she was obviously fucking my father. That made me feel all kinds of dirty… and gross.

Of course she wasn’t Gia Santoro. Gia Santoro used to follow me around everywhere back home in Foggia before I’d gone to boarding school and the rest of my family had moved to America. She’d been nerdy, skinny, and wore glasses and braces. Her hair had been brown, wildly curly and kind of frizzy, floating all around her head. She’d also told every girl in the neighborhood school that she was going to marry me.